A week or three ago here, writing about the movie Gypsy, I made the comment that among the things that spoiled the film for me was that Rosalind Russell simply felt dubbed. There was a disconnect between her speaking and singing voices that, to me, removed the credibility of her characterization. This is my complaint about a lot of movie musicals.
Here's a scene from another film where this kind of thing bothers me — the 1958 South Pacific. I'm not sure how many of the actors in this were lip-syncing to their own voices. Ray Walston obviously did his own singing. The sailor named "Stew Pot" obviously did not. In fact, his singing voice was supplied by the legendary Thurl Ravenscroft, better known as the voice of Tony the Tiger. (Though for some reason, no attempt was made to match his speaking voice, which you'll note is quite different and perhaps not his own either, to Ravenscroft's deep tones.) Some of the others, I'm guessing, did their own singing…but almost none of the voices feel to me like they're coming from those sailors…
